Lord Greywell's Dilemma (18 page)

“A sorry plight for the little fellow,” Francis said. “I tell you what, I shall visit him. Can’t leave him surrounded by females all day. How old is he now?”

“More than seven months. He’s begun to crawl.”

Francis looked surprised. “Has he now? I didn’t think they started to move so young. But then, I haven’t any experience of children, you see.”

“Well, he doesn’t get too far before he collapses, but he’s a wiry boy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he could get anywhere he wants within the month.” Elspeth pushed back a strand of hair that had come loose from her bonnet. “Would you like to ride back with me now and see him?”

Francis, whose offer to visit the child was made as spuriously as most things he did, was slightly disconcerted. “Well, I was . . . That is, I had intended to ride into Coventry.” Then he shrugged and smiled at her. “I can do that anytime. Certainly I will come back to Ashfield with you, as long as you promise me some tea and a bite to eat. I haven’t had a thing since breakfast.”

There was no way for Elspeth to know he’d only eaten this meal at ten, his usual hour, and she hastened to assure him of a plentiful tea. “Where have you been?” she asked as they directed their horses back to the stables.

“London, mostly. Though I did spend a week with a friend in Hertfordshire. He’s a poet, too.”

Elspeth regarded him with interest. “You’re a poet?”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t presume to call myself one,” he said modestly, “but, yes, I do scribble a bit.”

“How wonderful! May I see something you’ve written one day?”

Francis was not the least inhibited about showing his work. “I have something I’ve been working on in my pocket, as it happens. At tea I’ll read it to you.”

He was not a success with Andrew. Not knowing precisely how to treat the child, his behavior fell somewhere between what it would have been in greeting a dog and conversing with the village idiot. Elspeth hastened him off to the drawing room, where he pulled out a few sheets of crumpled paper as she gave instructions for tea. When she returned her attention to him, she found him deeply engrossed in rereading his own poem, the dreamy light in his eyes again. He was quite a nice-looking man, she decided. Softer somehow than Greywell, with his light coloring and his smooth skin. And she especially liked this habit of his of going off into reveries. They made him seem more spiritually attuned than the majority of the people she met.

And his poem was ambitious in that direction, with its intent to discuss the human soul, its deepest workings and its loftiest relations. Francis told her that before he began reading, which was a wise decision on his part, since she was soon lost in the metaphysical ramblings of blank verse. But he did have the facility of cloaking his thoughts in images of the countryside, the passage of the seasons, and the simple beauty of everyday things. He read it, too, with an amateur player’s musical resonance, and when he stopped and looked up at her, his face was suffused with unaffected pleasure.

“That was very moving,” Elspeth said, hoping it was the right thing to say. “I have to admit I didn’t understand all of it. One is used to listening more for a story in a poem, and yours, at least to my mind, is more subtle than that.”

“Ah, subtle. How clever of you to understand that, Lady Greywell.” He bestowed a beatific smile on her, as he folded the sheets and replaced them in his pocket. “Though the groundwork is philosophical, I hope the purity of the natural images will induce people to consider it for its language as well. This is but a fragment of a far larger work, you understand. That’s why you didn’t perfectly comprehend it. You would have to read the whole to fully grasp the importance of this particular segment. Occasionally I dabble in lighter verse, of course. I’m particularly fond of the sonnet. Perhaps you’d care to hear one of those another day?”

“Oh, yes. That would be most enjoyable,” Elspeth assured him. She felt sure she’d be capable of understanding a sonnet.

Two footmen brought in the tea tray and a tray laden with cakes, bread and butter, and biscuits, as well as fruit from the succession houses and some slices of cold meat and cheese. Elspeth had been quite specific in asking for a variety of foods for her visitor, fearing she had kept him from a more lavish meal at some inn in Coventry.

“Please help yourself to whatever you want,” she said as she poured him a cup of tea. She was a bit disappointed when he took only one slice of meat and a piece of bread and butter.

“Thank you.” He ate daintily, his long, elegant fingers hovering nonchalantly over the fine China plate. “I don’t hold with any one school of poetry, you know. As far as I’m concerned, there are merits and disadvantages to all of them. I pick and choose,” he said, helping himself to a slice of cheese and a peach. “And I study those poets I most admire.”

“Who are they?”

“Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden.” Francis gave an explanation of his reasons for choosing each of them as a model of accomplishment while he took two biscuits and a slice of cake. He had not finished talking before he finished the food on his plate. Elspeth was astonished at how much he managed to eat while seeming only to discuss so rarefied a subject as poetry and poets.

Before he had completed his discussion he had once more filled and emptied his plate of another biscuit and another slice of cake.

At last he drained his cup of tea and rose. “I mustn’t stay a moment longer. You know, Lady Greywell, you are undoubtedly the most attentive companion I have yet come across. Don’t let me bore you with my theories on poetry! There are a dozen subjects on which I can converse creditably, I promise you. Horses and hounds, opera and the theater, even women’s fashions. Next time I shan’t be such a single-minded fellow, if you will give me leave to visit you again.”

“But of course. Anytime.”

In a gesture of extreme gallantry, he carried her hand to his lips. “Greywell is a lucky devil to have found you,” he murmured. “I shall write a poem—a sonnet  of course—on the subject.”

Elspeth laughed. “I doubt you could find fourteen lines to write on the matter, Mr. Treyford, but you are welcome to try.”

His visit had cheered Elspeth, and she sat down almost immediately to write a letter to Greywell in which she lightly made fun of Treyford’s enormous appetite for cook’s Savoy cake and for his own philosophical poetry. She even jested about Treyford’s awkward behavior with Andrew, but added to be just:

Still, he is an engaging young man and probably a friend of yours, so you mustn’t think I shall avoid him in future. He says he’s going to write a sonnet about how lucky you were to have found me! If it is quite ludicrous enough to appeal to you, I’ll send it
along. Did I mention that I’ve put a number of your snuff boxes in your study in a closed case? Only the “Lady Godiva” type, the gold enameled one with the diamond thumbpiece, and the Sacrifice to Venus, as well as the Marcault and the repoussé gold plaque one, though I’ve stuck a few others to the back of the open case where they’re not so obvious, like the Triumphs of Alexander one. I understand the last is after a painting of Charles Le Brun, but the staff aren’t likely to know
that
,
are they? The gold-mounted tortoiseshell with the gouache miniature I didn’t think safe enough even in your study, so I’ve put it in one of the drawers in your chamber under a stack of cravats. It seems to me Venus is a very convenient excuse for drawing naked ladies!

The tone of her letter rather pleased Greywell, despite her continued insistence on sounding like a prude. She had, after all, mentioned “naked ladies,” when she really hadn’t had to. And her good-humored mocking of Francis Treyford had made him laugh when he read it. Francis was six years younger than Greywell, but they had spent time together as boys, being close neighbors. Greywell had long held a similar view of his friend to that which Elspeth expressed, a gentle, affectionate, yet rueful acceptance of Francis’ languid preoccupation. It did not for a moment occur to him that Francis posed any sort of threat to the tranquility of his household. So he wrote back:

I’m glad you’ll have Francis to divert you from your daily routine, since you’ve mentioned Emily Marden is preoccupied with her child. Your letter reminded me that, tall and thin as he is, he’s always had the most incredible appetite. He isn’t that interested in physical activity, so I must suppose his brain burns up an inordinate amount of excess nourishment with his constant devising of obscure verse. He’s a harmless puppy, though, and good company when he wishes to be.

This letter reached Elspeth some time after the news that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, early in March, and after she had begun to wonder if Francis was, after all, a ‘harmless puppy.’ And now that there seemed a chance that Greywell would return to Ashfield, with the Congress so rudely interrupted, she felt entirely confused about what her wishes were on the subject. For Andrew’s sake, of course, she wished that his father would come home. But as for herself . . .

After his initial visit, Francis had become a regular caller. As often as not he appeared when there was a chance of a meal, but this did not long remain his primary purpose in coming. He was, Elspeth presumed, fed at his own home, though he soon assured her he was not able to eat a bite unless he was in her company. Elspeth did not believe him for a minute, considering this a part of his poetic fancy, which she knew was inhabited by the most amazing hyperbole.

And yet . . . it was flattering, his obvious attachment to her. And it was difficult not to return his regard in some very tiny way. He was a fine-looking fellow, with his whimsical eyes and his shaggy blond locks. His mind, too, was so elevated, so intent on the finer things of life, the spiritual benefits of philosophical poetry. Who could resist such an appeal? Not Elspeth. Not entirely.

“Listen to this,” he would say, lounging on the sofa in the North Drawing Room with a leather-bound edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets in his hands.

“Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,

Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force;

Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill;

Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;

And every humor hath his adjunct pleasure,

Wherein it finds a joy above the rest;

But these particulars are not my measure,

All these I better in one general best.

Thy love is better than high birth to me,

Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost,

Of more delight than hawks and horses be;

And, having thee, of all men’s pride I boast.

Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take

All this away, and me most wretched make.”

Then he would cry, in the wretched, appealing agony of his deep-timbred voice, “But I don’t have you! This is my challenge, my burden to bear. Ah, Elspeth, you will make my poetry purer from the very struggle you cause.”

“What nonsense!” she would lightly retort. “You’ve dreamed me out of whole cloth, Francis. Made me up to be your guiding light. How ridiculous you are.” But she did not think him at all ridiculous, really. There is something few can resist in being made the object of such passionate infatuation. And Elspeth, with her disapproving husband, found a certain comfort in Francis’ devotion. It was so aesthetic.

“Will he come home now?” Francis asked every day. “Why don’t you hear from him?”

“He’s not in the habit of writing very often. I imagine I’ll hear soon enough.”

Too soon, was what she feared. Sometimes she thought he might actually be on his way home, thinking it would take him little longer to journey there than for a letter to reach her. Perhaps assuming she would be expecting him, since the Congress had had to be abandoned and a new attempt made to conquer the little Frenchman.

Elspeth was torn between wanting him to see Andrew and Andrew to see him, and wanting him far away so her interludes with Francis could continue uninterrupted. She took to hanging around the Great Hall about the time the post was brought from the receiving office, so she would know as soon as possible what to expect. When the awaited letter finally arrived she snatched it unceremoniously from the silver salver on which Selsey had deposited it and hurried off to the Queen’s Closet to peruse it in peace.

I’ve come with Wellington to Brussels,
he wrote.

Elspeth barely read the rest of the letter, she was so relieved. She refused to consider what this signified in herself. All she acknowledged was that Andrew would have to wait a little longer to see his father . . . and she would have more time with Francis.

Francis proclaimed himself to be ecstatic. Right in the North Drawing Room he sat down at a desk to pen an Ode to Fortune, while Elspeth sat on the sofa a few feet away from him, patiently crocheting a lace collar, a slight smile curving her lips. Odes were not precisely Francis’ forte, he explained when he sat down to read it to her, but he had felt so inspired he was convinced she would excuse him.

Was ever fate so sweet a mistress

As now she is to me?

Wrapped in the glorious light of love

What better place to be?

The soul is touched with celestial harmony

The heart with a golden glow,

An enraptured man hath not the words,

One fair lady could bestow.

Fortune touched me with her wand

Delaying the day most feared

Will now the lady defy such a sign

As the angels themselves have cheered?

Spare me now the gloom of the clouded day

Of the torrents of rain and despair.

Thou alone hast the power in a single hand

To make the day sunny and fair.

“It needs work,” he conceded at her slight frown. “Anything you dash off is bound to be improved with a little future consideration, but the thought is there.”

Since it was one of the few of his poems she’d understood, Elspeth did not disagree with him on that point. It was the thought itself which disturbed her. Not so much his continued declaration of his own love for her (which she regarded as sheer exaggeration), but there had been something in there about her love for him. Surely she didn’t love him. She was fond of him, to be sure, but that hardly constituted love. Elspeth would have thought herself remiss if she allowed Francis (as she now called him) to think she loved him.